Hooray, another Bucky O'Hare episode! Today's subject is episode four, "Home, Swampy, Home," one of the better episodes of this little series, and neatly ties up a few of the loose ends left dangling at the end of the last episode. Personally though, I think they kind of dropped the ball by going ahead and making this story the fourth episode, because afterwards they're left to just do standalone episodes which have little to do with the main thrust of the series (that is, the peril of Bucky's homeworld).

We open with Bucky O'Hare riding on the Toad Croaker and exploring the now-swampified landscape of Warren, which looks considerably more waterlogged than it did in "A Fistful of Simoleans." Buildings and trees are half-sunken in the murky waters. It's all very depressing and a far cry from the Warren seen in the promotional video. Bucky contacts the Righteous Indignation on a little comlink thingie, and we see that the ship is currently in orbit around the planet. The question of why Bucky is alone down there while everyone else remains on the ship is quickly answered when Deadeye complains that Bucky didn't take him with him, and Bucky responds that "this is one mission I have to do alone." He tells Jenny et al that there's no sign of any enemy patrols, but considering the planet was conquered by the Toad Empire, there must be toads nearby somewhere.

Indeed, no sooner are the words out his mouth than a decently-sized aquatic submersible of some sort rises up out of the murky waters, with several Stormtoads standing on its deck. One of them is manning a large mounted laser cannon and fires at Bucky, misses, and yells, "That fleabag of a furbag!" Bucky, glancing back at them, grumbles, "'Fleabag of a furbag?' Now they've gone and made me mad!" He does a U-turn and flies back at the toads, and proceeds to land the Toad Croaker on the deck of their submersible. A few of the Stormtoads leap clear and into the water, but four get squashed underneath the big "shoe" bottom of the Croaker. Bucky takes off again and we see that the four Stormtoads are still alive, albeit with crazy spiral eyes to indicate unconsciousness.

Two more of these sub vehicles surface from the water, filled to overflowing with Stormtoads, and fire on Bucky. Despite taking a direct hit to one of his engines, he manages to speed up and put some distance between himself and the toads. I mentioned in the previous episodes some deleted scenes, and here in "Home, Swampy, Home," there was an extra bit of this sequence that was scripted but never animated. Instead of just narrowly escaping, Bucky gets rescued by what the script identifies as "guerilla hares," denizens of Warren who have thus far avoided capture and are fighting back in any way they can. But since these characters never become important to the plot (or even appear again in the episode), they wisely decided to drop them.

Meanwhile, Bucky isn't the only one who's in trouble. Up above, the Righteous Indignation is being fired upon by a toad warship. Its laser fire bounces off the shields, but the entire ship is shaking and everyone is being knocked around inside. Jenny says that they're undermanned (I'll say!) and outgunned, "with no way to contact Bucky." Um, why not? Nothing before this established that his radio wasn't working, or that theirs wasn't. Anyway she says she needs to contact Willy DuWitt, which is kind of sad that our mammalian heroes can't do anything without this child.

We cut to Willy on Earth, and he's in the park playing with a remote-control airplane. Suddenly Jenny's voice echoes inside his head. "Who's there?" he asks aloud, and Jenny's voice tells him to "use the memory stone." So he digs the thing out of his pocket, and Jenny's face appears in it. "Jenny? Wow! I could hear you in my head!" Willy gushes. I've often wondered why Willy even wants to stay in the human universe. Here, he has to put up with bullies, somewhat neglectful parents, and a generally crummy existence. Whereas in the Aniverse, he gets to have all sorts of exciting adventures and save entire planets. Maybe my priorities are just different.

Anyway, Jenny hurriedly explains that they're under attack and they've lost communications, and they desperately need his help 'cause he's got the Midas touch or something. "Sure! You bet!" he cries. Putting the stone back into his pocket, he gathers up the toy plane and walks off.

Cut back to the engine room of the Righteous Indignation a short time later. Bruiser is being thrown back and forth in the engine room as the ship is rocked by the toad fire. The photon accelerator activates, and Willy's closet door appears like usual as Bruiser gets to his feet, rubbing his head. He is given his baboon battlesuit and told that he's needed "up there," meaning the bridge of course.

Willy, now dressed in the battlesuit, climbs up to the bridge. He asks where Bucky is, and Jenny explains that he's on the surface of Warren "consulting with his mentor." This is the first time we've ever heard of this "mentor," and Jenny simply says he's "some mysterious teacher who taught him how to fight." How very Yoda-esque. Anyway, Bucky wouldn't tell them any more about the guy than that, which is very convenient for the writers. Changing the subject, Jenny tells Willy to hurry and see if he can get the communications equipment working so they can contact Bucky and, I guess, let him know they're being shot at. That, and that they're turning tail and running because the next thing we're shown is the Righteous turning around and flying away from the attacking toad ship.

Back down on Warren, Bucky lands the Toad Croaker outside of a cave. He dismounts from the Croaker and approaches the cave, from which a bright golden light emanates. "I'll never rest until I find where my captured people are and free them from toad slavery," he says to no one in particular. "That's why I've come to seek the mentor's wisdom." A low voice issues forth and Bucky stops just inside the entrance of the cave. The voice tells him, "Bucky O'Hare, remember that it is easier to take a fortress from the inside by stealth than it is from the outside by force." Bucky then enters the cave, and...

...we immediately cut to sometime later, as he exits the cave. So, we're cheated out of ever getting to see his mentor. And the character is never mentioned again. This is, to me, the episode's only real sour spot. Why even have the mentor at all? The world may never know. He gets onto the Toad Croaker and flies off. Suddenly another toad submarine surfaces, and one of the Stormtoads aboard points at Bucky. "It's Bucky O'Hare! Get him!" he yells. The toads fire grappling lines which grab the wings of the Toad Croaker, stopping it dead in the air. It falls forward and Bucky tumbles from his seat, falling down towards the water. A second toad sub surfaces beneath him, with four Stormtoads holding out a net for him to fall into. Land in it he does.

They close the net over Bucky, who thrashes about in distress. "We got him!" cries one particularly excitable Stormtoad. "We captured Bucky O'Hare!" The Stormtoads all cheer as Bucky clenches his fists angrily.

Back aboard the Righteous Indignation, Willy finishes repairing the communications console and reinserts it into its rightful place among the controls. Jenny tries the communicator, but receives no answer from Bucky, which isn't surprising considering we just saw him get captured. Jenny then announces that Bucky not answering can only mean one thing: that he's been captured. Not necessarily. There's a lot of other reasons for him not to answer. Simple mechanical problems, or maybe he's still with his mentor for all they know. I hate it when the good guys just jump to conclusions like this, and it's even worse when they're absolutely right. The Righteous turns around and blasts off back in the direction of Warren, but will they be in time to rescue Bucky?

Probably not, as we immediately cut to him being taken aboard the toad warship that was attacking them earlier. He's in chains (ooh, kinky) and two grinning Stormtoads are leading him down a hallway. He growls that he's "not slaving for the likes of you wartbags" as they take him onto the bridge. A toad officer in a red uniform and a long black cape is reclining in the command chair, being served a drink by a female toad assistant. This is Captain Smada, and he's, well, for lack of a better term, pretty flamboyantly gay. Overhearing Bucky, he says, "Oooo! Does the big bad captain think he's too good to join the slave pens with his brothers?" Rising, Smada walks over and affectionately cups Bucky's chin with one hand, and Bucky naturally reacts with revulsion. "Well, we'll see about that!" Smada sneers, then orders someone to "get me the Air Marshall!"

We cut to the distant planet of Kinnear, a dry little dustball of a world and the site of a toad imperial factory. It is protected by a massive metal dome over it. Inside, several enslaved hares wearing orange uniforms are sitting at long tables, welding lengths of piping, guarded by armed Stormtoads. A toad announcer's voice comes over the P.A. system, calling for the slaves' attention. We then focus on one slave in particular, the only one in the entire factory who is not a hare, a blonde female fox named Mimi LaFloo. She has "potential love interest for Bucky" written all over her.

The toad announcer, we see, is standing on a big circular platform high above the factory floor, ringed with television screens. It is on a large "arm" allowing it to be raised and lowered at the whim of the toads. It now lowers down so that the announcer may address the slaves, as images of the Toad Air Marshall appear on the TV screens, and the announcer guy says, "You are to welcome the great and glorious hero of the Empire, his supreme toadship, the Air Marshall!" I guess the Air Marshall did get some recognition for his quick thinking at the end of "The Good, the Bad and the Warty," after all.

The announcer steps aside and the Air Marshall himself comes forward and takes the podium. He says he's been sent to ensure that this "final project" meets its deadline, and snarls to the assembled hares that he "does not tolerate laziness." Exactly what the project is isn't apparent yet, as apparently the slaves only do so much at one time, assembling it piece by piece. Anyway, Mimi, down below with a brown hare named Larry, scoffs at his notion of laziness, whispering that "they work us until we can hardly move, while they watch Toad TV!" To prove her point she indicates first a nearby group of exhausted-looking hares, and then a pair of Stormtoads who are glued to a TV set.

Larry whispers back, "Not for much longer. Bucky O'Hare will save us!" Looks like we got ourselves a fanboy. "Not this Bucky O'Hare character again," Mimi sighs. "That's all you hares talk about!" Larry looks a little hurt, and then an older grey hare, Bob, walks up to them and defends Bucky, calling him "the greatest hare warrior of all time," prompting Larry to say he will come and save them. "Yeah, sure," says Mimi, "you'll excuse me if I don't hold my breath." Overhearing them, one of the Stormtoads shown watching TV a moment ago walks over to the railing and yells down at them to be quiet. Oblivious to this, the Air Marshall continues with his speech and says any slave caught in the act of sabotage will be "severely punished."

He's interrupted as Frix comes running up to him (there's no sign of Frax just yet though) and tells him there's an urgent call from Captain Smada. For some reason the Air Marshall looks surprised to be hearing from Smada. And speaking of Frix, from this episode onwards, he and Frax - when he appears - have completely different voices than they did in the first three episodes. Anyway Captain Smada appears on a nearby viewscreen and informs the Air Marshall that he has "incredible news." "Look at this!" he says, and steps aside, revealing a very angry-looking Bucky, still in chains and still being held by two Stormtoads. The Air Marshall couldn't be any more excited. "Bucky O'Hare at last!" he cries. "Oh, how he will suffer at my hands!"

Back aboard the toad warship, Smada, Bucky and the two Stormtoads stand before a huge screen displaying the Air Marshall's hideous visage, the toad supreme commander trying to come up with a suitable way to dispose of Bucky. "I'll find the deepest, darkest pit and... and... throw you in it!" he stammers. "Thanks, I need a vacation," Bucky retorts, and the Air Marshall tells Smada to send Bucky to him on Kinnear on the double. Bucky looks interested when he hears the name of the planet, but then Smada has him dragged off the bridge.

Are you sure Jenny immediately concludes Bucky's been captured? In the version I've got, she just says "That means one thing: something has happened to him!" (That could mean a number of things, actually, but still...) I wonder if there might be some differences here and there between your DVD and my TV capture versions. I've heard that the censors in the UK sometimes change a few things when they get material from overseas.

Back on Kinnear, images of Bucky are now on the TV screens that ring the command platform and the Air Marshall is back at the podium. He gleefully announces Bucky's capture to the assembled slaves, and all of the toads throughout the factory applaud. Down below, all of the hares look shocked and horrified. Larry in particular is crying. He, Mimi and Bob stand off to the side, apart from the other slaves. Bob whimpers that Bucky was their last hope, but Mimi, not looking terribly sympathetic, comes over and puts her arms around their shoulders and tells them they can't rely on anyone but themselves. She then says that the celebration over Bucky's capture is a perfect opportunity for her to sneak off and get a look at the factory's computers "to find out what this project really is."

Telling them to cover her, she runs off. She climbs up to a walkway above the factory floor. A Stormtoad walks past but she manages to duck out of sight. She walks up to a suspiciously unguarded computer console and types on the keyboard. A moment later, a piece of paper comes out of the printer. Grabbing this, Mimi runs past two inattentive Stormtoads and climbs back down to the floor. Back to the Air Marshall now, and he yells for the slaves to return to work. The Stormtoad who had earlier yelled at Mimi and her friends to be quiet glances over again and notices that she is gone. He points his maser rifle threatingly at Larry and Bob, demanding to know where "that fox" is.

Larry stutters fearfully. "She's-- she's-- she's right, uh..." And then Mimi suddenly steps out from behind him. "...here. See?" a very relieved Larry finishes. The Stormtoad looks suspicious, but just tells them to return to work like the Air Marshall said. Mimi, Larry and Bob disappear behind some equipment. Mimi takes out the printout she got from the computer, showing it to the two hares. She can't make out what it says, but Bob's eyes widen in recognition. "It's a climate converter!" he gasps, horrified. Larry grabs the printout and crumples it up, ranting that "that's what they used to turn our entire world into a sticky, icky, slimey, grungy, mucky swamp!" Mimi covers his mouth to shut him up, and Bob whispers that they have to destroy it. Telling them to follow her, Mimi turns and runs off. After a moment, Larry and Bob follow along with a few other hares.

Back aboard the toad warship, Captain Smada is relaxing in his command chair when suddenly a television monitor on the end of a robotic arm, displaying Komplex, lowers in front of him. Komplex demands to know why he wasn't informed of the capture of Bucky, whereupon Smada, leaping to his feet and standing at attention, says he thought Komplex knew already. "You are the master, you know all! I assumed--" Komplex cuts him off, telling him he assumes too much, and instructing him to put Bucky in his fastest transport and send him to the Toad Homeworld to him, not to the Air Marshall on Kinnear. "Oh, I hear and I obey!" Smada says, saluting. We then cut to a small toad ship leaving the warship and speeding off into space.

Cut to the Righteous Indignation, apparently still en route back to Warren. Lotta planet-hopping going on in this episode. Jenny, at the controls, says she's intercepted "a scrambled toad transmission to that warship" (apparently they're closer than I thought), and tells Blinky to "unscramble it and play it back." Well this is awfully convenient. Blinky complies, extending two of his fingers and inserting them into small slots in the control panel, and a moment later we hear a replay of what Komplex had told Smada earlier. "Attention all hands!" Jenny says. "The toads have captured Bucky!" She orders full power to the engines so they can pursue them.

Back at the slave factory on Kinnear, we see Mimi, Larry and Bob working on the treads of an enormous crane which is holding a large outer panel of the climate converter with wrenches (where are the other hares we saw leave with them earlier?). They look at one another and hold up their tools, looking very determined and signaling that something is about to go down. At Mimi's signal, the three turn and throw their wrenches into the treads of the crane, jamming the wheels. The entire crane somehow explodes, dropping the panel onto the top of the partially completed climate converter, severely damaging it. The three saboteurs have no time to celebrate as four Stormtoads come running up to them. As they're seized, one Stormtoad growls, "Take 'em to the torture room!" Uh-oh.

Somewhere in space at that very moment, Captain Smada's fastest transport is en route to the Toad Homeworld with the Righteous Indignation swiftly gaining on it. Inside, Bucky, in chains, sits between two armed Stormtoads. Two more Stormtoads sit up front, flying the ship, and one of them says they're being followed. The other Stormtoad pilot points at a small viewscreen, which displays the Righteous, and identifies the ship by name. Overhearing, Bucky, looking extremely smug, leans over to the toad sitting on his right and says, "You toads might as well give up now. Nothing gets away from Jenny."

The transport flies through an asteroid field in its attempt to escape from the mammal frigate, but Bucky is right about Jenny's relentlessness. She doggedly follows and continues to gain on the toad ship as both vessels exit the asteroid field safely, and Deadeye, manning the guns, takes aim, pointlessly jabbering to no one as he does so ("Got 'em in my sights! Range closing... now!"). He fires, hitting the transport in the rear. On board, Bucky and the Stormtoads are thrown from their seats. One of the Stormtoads drops the key to the chains, and Bucky quickly retrieves it, using his foot to step on it and keep it from sliding away. Deadeye fires a second time, and again the ship is rocked with everyone aboard tossed around like ragdolls.

Before Deadeye can fire a third time, Bucky's voice comes over the radio and tells him to stop, because "you're burnin' fur here!" Jenny, flanked by Willy and Blinky, listens eagerly. "Bucky, is that you?" she asks. "We thought you were captured." Um, of course he was, stupid. What else do you think he's doing on a freakin' toad ship? Aboard the toad ship, Bucky is now out of his chains and stands over the four unconscious Stormtoads. "Just hangin' out a little with the toads," he jokes, then says he "needed to get some information." That's got to be the shortest interrogation ever. "And now I think I understand what my mentor meant when he said, 'It's easier to take a fortress from the inside by stealth than from the outside by force.'"

Blinky asks the most obvious question. Well, okay, the second most obvious. The most obvious question would be what the hell Bucky is talking about, but instead Blinky just asks, "But how can we get inside fortress?" Bucky says they can't, "but old Angus McJump can!" Jenny, Willy and Blinky proceed to go "Who?" in unison. Ha.

Before he can answer, we cut back to Warren again. Thankfully for the final time in this episode. Two Stormtoads are flying around in a small fan-propelled hovercraft on patrol. One of them sees a shadowy figure in the entrance to a nearby building, which quickly disappears inside. Stormtoad #1 asks what that was, and Stormtoad #2 says, "A hare. Let's round 'im up!" Yee-haw! He flies over and lands the hovercraft outside the building. Both Stormtoads dismount and enter, pointing their laser rifles at the fleeing hare, who is wearing tattered robes, and Stormtoad #2 yells for him to put his hands up.

Trembling, the hare turns. He has green fur, a long white beard, and an eyepatch over his left eye. He holds his hands up in surrender as the two Stormtoads approach him. This is Bucky in disguise as the aforementioned Angus McJump, but we're not supposed to know that yet, so sshhh! He pleads with the Stormtoads not to hurt him as they approach, and Stormtoad #1 asks what they should do with him. Before his partner can reply, "Angus" yells, with a very authentic sounding, feeble old man voice "Oh, please! Don't send old Angus McJump to the slave factory! Anything but that!"

The reverse psychology pays off. The Stormtoads laugh cruelly and Stormtoad #2 prods Angus with the barrel of his rifle. "'Anything but that?' Well, then that's where we'll send ya!" he sneers. They herd the old hare out of the building towards their vehicle. Angus grins secretly.

Back on Kinnear, we find Mimi, Larry and Bob in the aforementioned "torture room." They're strapped into chairs with VR goggles over their eyes and tubes running from their ears. They convulse, moaning in pain and despair. Frix and Frax are at the controls nearby, and Frix says they sound like they're suffering. I think that's the point of torture, you halfwit. Frax says all they're doing is "inputting Toad TV directly into their brains, ears and eyes." Oh, God. Wondering what's on, Frix turns on a small television in front of him, which begins playing a really annoying commercial for "flypaper wallpaper." This little ad goes on for far too long, and I won't make you suffer by recapping it. It just involves a toad housewife hawking the sticky wallpaper designed to trap flies.

Frax turns the TV off and says it's "the usual high standard of Toad TV." Frix shuts off the torture machine and looks over at Mimi, Larry and Bob who are now sagging in their chairs, mentally and emotionally exhausted. "Maybe other species simply aren't ready for our superior cultural standards," he avers.

Heh heh heh! More subversive anti-TV messages! I doubt that's what killed the series, but it probably helped: you don't get much good will from your sponsors by making fun of them. I notice this series is very heavy on the commercial breaks: I count at least five definite breaks in this episode alone, and just as many potential spots for a break between these. (One of those spots was the part where Bucky goes to visit that mentor of his. There may have been as much as three minutes worth of commercials for the home audience between his going in that cave and coming back out again. That's a rather sleazy "cheat" to pull on the audience, but I do have to admire the cleverness of using commercials that way.)

It occurs to me (though not, evidently, to Frix and Frax) that the victims of this torture might be faking their suffering a bit. After all, even if it's a bit uncomfortable to have that TV stuff piped straight into your brain, a little advertising couldn't be quite as bad as slave labor. If torturing them were up to me, I'd pipe in whatever the toad equivalent of the non-MST3K "Manos: The Hands Of Fate" is instead.

I think "metrosexual" is the word you were fishing for to describe Captain Smada, incidentally. Not that they had that word back then, of course, but it does fit him; he reminds me a lot of John Edwards. I don't take that "affectionate" cupping of Bucky's chin as conclusive evidence of anything, since it was only for about half a second and it's more like he was insulting Bucky than being affectionate. However, I do detect a hint of French accent in his lisping, and you do have to wonder about a guy who's wearing ruffles (of all things) on his uniform.

It's interesting that Komplex would admit so readily to not being omniscient when Smada calls him on it. Nothing more is ever made of that, but I'll bet a second season could have done something with this point. Smada remains obedient and submissive, but enough little mistakes like that on Komplex's part could lead some toads to start questioning the infallibility of his cause too.

I have another interesting observation on all these episodes so far that I'll share with you when you get finished with your recounting of this episode; so more, please! This is the right way to watch TV if you have to do it: with your analytical skills in overdrive. Paying attention to what the story is trying to say and all the subtler implications of it keeps your mind from turning to mush.

Toad Air Marshall's voice booms on the P.A. system, yelling for them. They rush out of the room. Out on the command platform, the Air Marshall is pacing back and forth, ranting about how Komplex ordered Bucky O'Hare sent to him, and not here to Kinnear. "He was my slave!" he bellows. "Mine!"

Frix and Frax run up and stand nervously at attention. The Air Marshall says Komplex thinks he's "washed up," and to impress him, he's going to finish the climate converter ahead of schedule. He tells them to have all the slaves to work double shifts until it's done, and Frix asks if that includes the three in the torture room. "I said everyone!" he yells. Frix and Frax salute, and then run off.

A short time later, Bucky-- er, Angus McJump arrives at the slave factory and is being told what to do by a Stormtoad. For some reason, he is never made to wear the orange uniforms worn by the other slaves. The Stormtoad tells him to join a nearby column of slaves headed off to work, and among them is an elderly female hare with white hair, glasses and green fur (and she's not wearing a uniform either, oddly). Bucky recognizes her as his Aunt Iris. She, and a cousin named Jeffrey who appears later on in the series, are the only family members of Bucky we ever meet. According to his biography on the DVD, his father and brothers were killed by the toads, presumably his mother died as well. Which means Aunt Iris and Cousin Jeffrey (presumably Iris' son) are the only family Bucky has left at all.

Anyway Bucky runs up to her and whispers to her, but because of his disguise she doesn't recognize him. "Does this help?" he asks, and lifts up his eyepatch and tugs down his fake beard, revealing the face of Bucky O'Hare. Iris is overjoyed, and they mingle with the work crew, talking as they walk. He explains he's here to organize a resistence group so they can get everyone out. But Iris tells him there's no need for that. They already have "an excellent resistence operation" in place, and promises to take him to meet the leader tonight. If she means Mimi's little group, they need all the help they can get. They come out onto the factory floor. The now mostly completed climate converter dominates the entire factory. Bucky's eyes widen in horror when he sees it. Climate converters are swiftly becoming this show's answer to the Death Star.

Later, it's mealtime for the slaves and they're all in a huge cafeteria, glumly spooing a soupy greenish substance from bowls. Bucky, still in his Angus McJump disguise, enters with Aunt Iris. She points out Mimi LaFloo standing on one of the lunch tables, fists clenched, talking to several assembled hares, including Larry and Bob. "Talk about a fox," Bucky mutters, wide-eyed. Yup. He's instantly smitten. Mimi announces that the climate converter is almost finished, and they need to strike now, and Bob starts to say what Bucky O'Hare would do if he were here, but Mimi cuts him off, angrily stomping her foot. "Bucky O'Hare, Bucky O'Hare! If I hear the name Bucky O'Hare one more time I'll scream!" she yells, then tells him if he doesn't want her to lead them he should just come out and say it.

Chastened, Bob says nothing. Bucky and Aunt Iris walk over to the group. Bucky whispers to Iris not to say anything about his identity, then walks right up to Mimi and starts talking in his old man voice again. "My vote goes for the little lady. Yes sir, Angus McJump'll follow you anywhere." Mimi looks underwhelmed, but any support is better than none at all, I guess, and she halfheartedly tells him thanks. She then asks the others if they're with her as well, and Larry, apparently acting as the mouthpiece of the group, responds enthusiastically in the affirmative. "Angus" makes fists and punches feebly at the air, saying, "I'll fight! I'll show those toads a thing or two!"

He stumbles and falls, but Mimi hops down and catches him. "That's--that's good of your, sir, but I'm afraid we need the stronger, younger folks." she tells him. Looking insulted, he tells her he's "not a day older than 93!" Exasperated, she caves and tells him he can be the lookout. "I hope he can see," she mutters under her breath. I know, the eyepatch isn't exactly reassuring. She then turns to Larry, Bob and the other hares, and says their plan hinges on whether or not they can reach the command platform at the top of the dome. She asks for the best jumper they've got, and Bob says, "Larry was the best jumper on Warren, except for Bucky--" but stops when Mimi glares at him, and sheepishly finishes, "uh, you-know-who." Mimi then tells everyone to gather around, and everyone huddles around her.

Later, Mimi, Larry, and Bob are at the base of the finished climate converter, washing it. Mimi glances up at the Stormtoad sentries. One of them yawns tiredly. Dropping her washcloth, she turns to the others and tells them to follow her. Along with "Angus," she, Larry and Bob run inside the climate converter. In the converter's control room, two toad scientists wearing white lab coats are making some adjustments to the instruments, a single Stormtoad standing in the doorway. Mimi creeps up on him, grabbing him and covering his mouth, pulling him out the door. We hear punching sounds, and then Mimi reappears holding the Stormtoad's maser rifle. She's then joined by Bucky, Larry and Bob. She turns to Bucky and tells him to keep watch in the entrance.

She then runs into the control room followed by Larry and Bob. Quickly they overpower the two scientists and Bob ties them up, then Mimi runs up a flight of stairs, followed by Larry. Bob presumably remains to guard the scientists. Back outside on the factory floor, one of the Stormtoad guards notices that the slaves who had been washing the climate converter are gone. He yells down to some of the other slaves and demands to know where "that fox and the other hares" has gone, and gets only a confused shrug in response. The Stormtoad activates the alarm, and soon klaxons are going off throughout the factory. Up on the command platform, the Toad Air Marshall stands at the railing with a Stormtoad. Frix and Frax linger nervously behind them. "It's the escape alarm!" the Stormtoad says, but assures the Air Marshall they they'll find them.

Mimi and Larry run out onto the surface of the climate converter, just underneath the command platform, and Mimi says they've got about a minute before they find where they are, and it's all up to Larry. She gives him a reassuring push, but he looks up at the command platform perhaps twenty feet about them and gulps nervously and says he didn't know it was going to be so high. Getting cold feet, he timidly says he can't go through with it. Before Mimi can ream him, some Stormtoads down below on the factory floor notice them and fire at them. They duck behind one of the conduit towers, and Mimi returns fire with the rifle she took off the Stormtoad earlier.

She cease fire and turns to Larry, who is just about hyperventilating in terror, telling him it's now or never. Sucking it up, he says he'll give it a try when suddenly a hand clamps down on his shoulder, startling him. Luckily it's only Angus McJump. "Forget it, kid, you'd never make it," he tells him in Bucky's voice. Ignoring the sudden change in voice, Mimi yells angrily that she told him to stay below with Bob. He rips off his robes, false beard and eyepatch, revealing Bucky O'Hare, resplendent in his flashy uniform (that explains why they never took off the robes; they would've discovered his uniform underneath and figured out who he was). Mimi and Larry are both shocked, and Bucky smirks at her and says, "Sorry, foxy lady. I'm not too good at taking orders." Without waiting for a reply, he turns and races across the surface of the climate converter. He suddenly jumps and soars through the air, up towards the command platform, as Mimi and Larry look on. Larry gulps nervously. Bucky reaches the platform, but just barely. He hangs onto the edge.

The Stormtoad who was talking to the Air Marshall a minute ago notices him and comes over, Bucky swings himself up and kicks him in the chest, knocking him back. He drops his rifle at Bucky's feet, and Bucky quickly picks it up and aims it at the astonished Air Marshall, Frix, Frax, and several toad scientists.

The Air Marshall can barely contain his fury, but manages to curse at him, "You--You dirty rat!" before turning and running. Bucky corrects him ("Hare!") and fires after him. All of the scientists scramble into a nearby elevator as Bucky fires over their heads, followed by the Air Marshall, and after they're all in the doors begin to shut behind them.

Frix and Frax run for it; Frix manages to squeeze in with the others, but there's no more room for Frax and the doors shut in his face. He bonks into them and knocks himself out. Ignoring him, Bucky turns and grabs a microphone, which allows him to talk over the P.A. system. "Hares of Warren, I've come to set you free!" he declares, then turns and fires into a bank of control panels. Power is shut down throughout the entire factory (I love it when just shooting one random control panel has this kind of effect). Stormtoads manning defense laser cannons suddenly find that their guns don't work anymore, and then we're treated to several scenes of the hares beginning to rebel against their captors, surrounding Stormtoads and jumping on them. Bucky then opens the big dome on top of the factory, allowing sunshine to pour in. Let freedom ring and all that jazz.

While all this is going on, Mimi and Larry are still standing down below on the surface of the climate converter. As Bucky walks up to the railing and waves down to them, Larry begins to jump up and down, clicking his heels in delight, squealing, "It's Bucky! Bucky O'Hare!" like a Backstreet Boys fangirl at a concert. Mimi, now seeming to be quite taken with Bucky's heroism, waves back to him and then says, more to herself than to anyone else, "And he's magnificent." Oh yeah, she's so hot for him now.

Meanwhile, the Righteous Indignation is still approaching Kinnear. Jenny says their long-range sensors indicate that the factory's defenses have been shut down. By defenses, I assume she means the big dome over it. The Righteous flies towards the surface of the planet (boy, they got there in record time). From the command platform, Bucky waves up at them. He then hops down onto the surface of the climate converter, where he is greeted by a jubiliant Larry and Bob, who shake his hands. "Bucky O'Hare, you are the greatest!" gushes Bob. Mimi walks over and tells him, "Yeah, nice work, 'told-timer.'" She walks closer to him, Bucky simply stares, dumbfounded as she places her hand on his chest in an affectionate way. "Just one thing," she adds. She leans in very close and it looks like they're about to kiss, but then she shoves him away and says, "Don't call me foxy."

Cut to a short time later, inside the climate converter. Bruiser is having the time of his life beating up on Stormtoads, who are now all laying in one huge dazed heap in the middle of the floor. Willy is examining all the controls and such and says it looks just like the one they blew up on Genus, and his train of thought trails off as Bucky enters with Mimi, Larry and Bob, and suddenly they hear the Air Marshall's voice booming over the P.A. system. He's outside, in a hovering Double Bubble with Frix, and tells the mammals they haven't escaped him yet. He is talking into the Double Bubble's communicator and holds a remote control of some sort with a blinking red light on it. "Unless you surrender and return to your slave pits, I will blow up this entire factory!" he threatens.

Frix, in the adjacent bubble, looks distressed at this, and says he can't blow up the factory because there are still other toads in there, including Frax. But the Air Marshall isn't worried. "The mammals will have no choice but to surrender," he assures Frix. Frix just mumbles, "I hope." Back inside, Mimi and her friends are in total despair, realizing that the entire factory is lined with explosives. Suddenly ready to throw in the towel, Mimi says, "We'll never get out of here! Oh, he's beaten us!" But Bucky, being the never-say-die sort, has other ideas. Pulling Willy aside to the controls, he tells him to "whip up a little surprise for our toad friends." Unaware that any of this is going on, the Air Marshall continues to yell into the radio for them to surrender.

Bucky goes over to the command chair of the converter and presses the button on the arm to activate it. The climate converter comes to life and the wind begins to pick up as the sky darkens. The Air Marshall and Frix watch this from their Double Bubble with growing horror. The wind gets worse and worse, causing the bubbles over the cockpits to flip open. The remote detonator is blown from the Air Marshall's hands. He and Frix scream as the Double Bubble gets picked up by the wind and flung far away into the distance, where it crashes with a big explosion. The detonator lands on the ground and breaks. I assume this means the Air Marshall is dead, but he'll be back in the next episode along with Frix, without explanation.

The hares celebrate throughout the factory, including two obviously male ones who are hugging one another just a little too affectionately if you get my drift. Bucky turns off the power to the climate converter, turning to Willy. "Willy, you're a genius!" he says. Wow, Bucky's so modest he lets Willy take all the credit for saving the day, even though it was his idea to turn the climate converter on. Willy then says that if the hares work on the converter, they can probably use it to reverse what was done to Warren.

Cut to Orwell Station, some time later. Bucky and his crew are aboard the station with the Secretary General and Mimi, who is now wearing a blue officer's uniform. The Secretary General names Mimi the captain of a new silver and blue spaceship that is docked outside, and Mimi, overwhelmed, says she doesn't know how to thank him. Gesturing to Bucky, he says, "Thank Bucky O'Hare. It was his idea." Wow, finally a new ship. This makes a grand total of three. Resolving to thank Bucky "in my own way," Mimi walks right up to him, grabs him, and kisses him on the cheeks. He grins like an idiot and his pupils turn heart-shaped for a moment (!). Jenny, looking on, walks away in a huff, muttering, "Some people have no sense of propriety."

Now Bucky stands with Mimi, looking out at the new frigate. Blinky comes up to them. Blinky enquires about the ship's name, and Mimi looks at Bucky and says she's going to call it the Screaming Mimi. For some reason, this so shocks Bucky that the episode concludes with him staring at her in disbelief, wide-eyed and openmouthed.

The End

My only major problem with this episode is the fact Aunt Iris disappears without a trace shortly after she's introduced. But I guess it's small potatoes compared to the rest.

Now Bucky stands with Mimi, looking out at the new frigate. Blinky comes up to them. Blinky enquires about the ship's name, and Mimi looks at Bucky and says she's going to call it the Screaming Mimi. For some reason, this so shocks Bucky that the episode concludes with him staring at her in disbelief, wide-eyed and openmouthed.

The End

My only major problem with this episode is the fact Aunt Iris disappears without a trace shortly after she's introduced. But I guess it's small potatoes compared to the rest.

I'd check for a deleted scene on that last part if I were you: the scene cuts straight from a shot of Bucky and Mimi looking at the new ship like proud parents in a maternity ward to Bucky looking all aghast even before Mimi announces the ship's name. I speculate that the missing scene has her turning and kissing Bucky full on the lips this time. (This would be deleted either because it was considered too racy for kids' television or the producers thought it wouldn't sell well in a cartoon targeted mainly at prepubescent boys; as the one boy's grandfather says at the end of Princess Bride, "Ah, that's kissing again. You don't wanna hear about that.") Aunt Iris, I further speculate, is another character they were holding back for a second season that never happened.

A few of the other dubious points of the series are more explainable, though budget and time constraints must have been squeezing the animators pretty hard for them to have left out so much. As in previous episodes, I presume the Air Marshall's ship had those clear egg-like escape pods in it just like all the other Double Bubbles and that he and Frix escaped the explosion in those. Those pods are probably something like the "little black boxes" planes have on them that are supposed to be virtually indestructible. (Of course, this always prompts some wag to ask "Why don't they make the whole plane out of those things, then?" I don't know for certain, but I assume the answer has something to do with weight and cost.) The bigger question to my way of thinking is how Frax ever got free. It's not as if the hares would just let him go waltzing out of there after they captured him. Presumably he escaped somehow, but that does suggest another possible deleted scene, cut to save time.

Blasting a panel, I concede, MIGHT take out the power to an entire factory if one happens to hit the right one, but I do wonder how Bucky and friends were able to open the factory's dome after that. The climate converter was presumably designed to run on its own power, but if all the built-in guns in the factory were dead, the dome (and the lights, for that matter) should have been dead as well.

I notice that the Air Marshall, in spite of Komplex's uncharitable assessment of him in the previous episode, is the most foresighted of all the villains and keeps racking up all the real achievements, such as they are. (He's conquered several planets, he expressed strong doubts about the Toadborg's plans that proved to be entirely justified, and here he was smart enough to have a self-destruct remote for the factory just in case he needed it.) Apparently, he didn't get his position for nothing.

One final question, which I intend to address in this next post on a certain subtlety I've noticed, is: how did Willy manage to use that keyboard and console (designed by and for the toads) to put the climate converter to work conjuring up a storm? Even in the face of his suspension-of-disbelief level of intelligence (the kind that allows him to build an entire advanced piece of machinery like a photon accelerator without having taken any formal courses in electronics or mechanics), there's no way he should have been able to read that console; it's all in toad language. As I'll explain in my next post (with visual aids), the reason he's able to do this is because in addition to riffing from Star Wars, this cartoon riffs a lot of material from Star Trek too.

Okay, here's a little subtlety of the show the producers may or may not have included intentionally: although every word is spoken in English for the viewers' purposes, neither Bucky nor any of his crew nor any of the other animals is actually speaking the same language. They probably have miniature universal translators pinned on some part of their body just like those spiffy badges from Star Trek (although this series took place some years before Star Trek: Voyager revealed this explanatory detail). Those badges, I seem to recall, worked by reading the brainwaves of the speaker and translating his thoughts into the listener's own language. Presumably, Jenny's people whipped up a device similar to this for all the other species in the aniverse, and as demonstrated with Willy DuWitt, it works on any as-yet undiscovered carbon-based form of life.

Every written and printed word that it's necessary for the viewers to read is also in English, but I contend that this is not what the characters are seeing. The only objects actually marked in English are Willy Duwitt's things, which brings us to exhibit A.

Exhibit A: Deadeye carefully examines Willy's play money, which is very clearly marked as such.

Why didn't Deadeye realize Willy's money was completely fake? He can't read what's printed on it, that's why. It's printed in this weird hairless baboon language he's never seen before in his life. Apparently from his pirate background, he recognizes that some species use printed notes for money, even though he doesn't recognize this kind. Beyond that, he probably can't even read the numbers on the bills and doesn't know how much they'd be worth if they were real. Actually, even if the bills had all been real, they'd be pretty worthless in the aniverse, where no one has ever heard of the planet Earth, let alone the USA. Maybe Deadeye was hoping to pay Earth's shops a visit, unaware that we humans have never had any confirmed sightings of other sentient species before and would tend to react rather hysterically to a first visit from any extraterrestrials.

Let us further note that Al Negator wasn't able to read Willy's play money either, even though it was just as clearly marked when Willy held it up for Al Negator to see, as shown in exhibit B. Al Negator even flipped through the bills as he was carrying them away, thoroughly unaware that they were quite brazenly marked as fakes.

Willy holds up the play money, which is just as clearly marked on the front as the back.

It actually makes more sense that he would accept them as currency than that Deadeye would, considering that he doesn't know what Willy is or where he comes from. He's never seen a human before, but as in the Star Wars movies, anyone who'd been around so many other sentient space-faring species for so long wouldn't be particularly excited at being introduced to one more. In Episode One, when Jar Jar Binks visited Tatooine, he was almost certainly the only one of his kind ever to set foot on that planet. Even the kids didn't bother to point and stare at him, though; with so much racial diversity as they had there (as shown in the famous cantina scene from Episode Four), a Gungan didn't stand out at all. To anyone less knowledgable about the actual number of known galactic civilizations than, say, the UAF, a human wouldn't stand out much either.

One also notices that none of the currency Al Negator uses has any markings on it at all. Presumably, the plastic chips and blue marbles he normally uses and accepts as payment are a form of electronic money, and have universally readable chips advertising their value embedded in them. He may have thought that Willy's species was newer to interstellar travel than the others (as indeed it was) and that Willy's money was a more primitive form of currency that would nevertheless trade freely on the galactic exchange.

In any case, it's pretty clear that nobody in the aniverse can read English. Why is Willy able to read their consoles, then, and figure out which buttons to press, then? The answer to that is coming up next.

Sometimes the animators do let us see how other languages in the aniverse look in printed form. Here, for example, is the code Jenny entered to deactivate the Genus defense grid.

Exhibit C: The code Jenny is entering, whether it's her own language or a digital formof communication, uses kanji the same way several Oriental languages do.

This particular string of symbols, of course, may not really mean anything. It's a code, after all, which might be entered in hexidecimal (or the aniverse's equivalent of hexidecimal) which then presumably reads out in the form of whatever symbols are assigned to the various hexidecimal numbers. Nevertheless, I like to think these are actually codes from Jenny's language we're seeing.

Here's the language the toads use, displayed on that console Willy was using to whip up a windstorm in this episode. I notice that while it has a number of rounded symbols in it (which fits the toads' style of construction, all circles and spheres with "warts" on them), it is largely composed of straight lines, much as English is. Toad writing is undoubtedly full of thin and spidery symbols because of their long digits and phalanges.

Exhibit D: The climate converter displays the toads' language.

So, how does Willy read this language? The secret is that the console is a machine, just like everything else anyone is portrayed being able to read. In fact, if you're paying attention, Mimi LaFloo wasn't able to read the toad language either when it was printed out on a diagram. Her fellow slaves also couldn't read the language; instead, they recognized the picture of the climate converter on the diagram, having seen a working model on Warren before the toads rounded them up and hauled them away to be slaves. Willy can read the console (and the buttons on the machine) because the universal translators everyone is presumably wearing also help translate anything on a machine into a readable language for whoever's viewing it. Since Willy knows how to read English, that's what he sees when he looks at the console (and at those buttons, which are blank in the show, but probably have a digital display on each of them as well). Since it's not important for us as the viewers to know what it says, we see what it's showing to anyone who doesn't need a universal translator to read it. This leads to some interesting conclusions.

First, Komplex, who's hooked into everything, apparently sees fit to remain compatible with the universal translators. Since he's trying to control everything, this makes plenty of sense; I do wonder, though, what kind of security programs Bucky and the other free races have to keep Komplex from corrupting their computer networks. Whatever they are, they must be very good to be able to remain standing for so long against a sentient program with huge amounts of processing power at its disposal.

Second, the toads apparently never changed their operating systems to lock out the universal translators and keep anyone from finding out what's on their computers; the benefits of remaining compatible with the free aniverse's computers must have outweighed the risks. Of course, it is rather convenient to be able to order slaves around in their own language without having to learn that language, but I can't help thinking they may have stayed with the old operating systems because they're too lazy to write their own. In the same way, our terrorist enemies in the Middle East continue to use various forms of Windows on their PCs because there's no such thing as a Middle Eastern counterpart to Bill Gates.

Third, and finally, I'm obviously overanalyzing this show again, but as established in all the riffing from Star Wars and Star Trek, the writers of this show can hardly be held responsible for some of their cheesier tricks since they swiped so many of them from someone else. They can get away with showing everyone speaking English because everyone else does this in their cartoons too. In anime featuring space aliens (Onegai Teacher, for example), everyone including those space aliens speaks fluent Japanese, so animators in other countries are all in on this literary scam as well.

I'm of the opinion that what we see is what we get. The Aniversian characters speak English and can therefore understand Willy. There's no inconvenient language barrier, so why would there be an alphabetical one? Why assume that since 90% of the written words in the show are in English they're really not?

As for the code Jenny uses, I doubt it's in the Aldebaran language. They speak English and aren't part of the U.A.F. - they lack a representative on the Council and are a very secretive society, so why would their language be used at all by S.P.A.C.E., which is the U.A.F.'s military? I think the code just looks like that because it's exactly that; encrypted code. Remember that it's for the only thing defending Genus from attack so of course it would be unreadable except to people trained to use it. In fact, I'm willing to bet that only certain members of the Righteous Indignation's crew (specifically Bucky, Jenny and Blinky) can read the code while others (Deadeye and Bruiser) can't.

(Although now that I think about it a huge flaw in the way this is done would be that the ability to read the code means little; you can transmit it without actually understanding it, so long as you possess the correct sequence, as Toadborg did. This means anyone can transmit the clearance codes as long as they've got this one specific sequence, which explains why Bucky was so adamant about getting the codes back from Al; although one wonders why they didn't just hightail it back to Genus ahead of the mothership and get them to change the code sequence to a new one, like they do with nuclear armament codes - of course one could also wonder why the toads did not destroy the dormant satellites with the mothership's considerable arsenal when they had the chance, unless they intended on using the defense network themselves once they had control of the planet, which would be smart).

As far as the money goes, it being labelled play money but Al and Deadeye not noticing strikes me as a genuine blooper. For one thing, the script identifies it as "Monopoly money" specifically, and it seems to me that the voice actors and animators did things based on this, but they labelled it as generic play money to avoid being sued by Parker Brothers (or is it Milton Bradley?). And, heck, now that I think of it I've actually never heard of real play money actually saying "Play money" on it in huge bold letters like that.

So, how does Willy read this language? The secret is that the console is a machine, just like everything else anyone is portrayed being able to read. In fact, if you're paying attention, Mimi LaFloo wasn't able to read the toad language either when it was printed out on a diagram. Her fellow slaves also couldn't read the language; instead, they recognized the picture of the climate converter on the diagram, having seen a working model on Warren before the toads rounded them up and hauled them away to be slaves.

Bob is the one who recognized the diagram of the climate converter, specifically. Larry didn't recognize it until Bob said it was a climate converter specifically after examining the diagram. It's only after Bob says, "It's a climate converter!" that Larry, as dumbfounded as Mimi up until this point, becomes enraged and crumples the paper up. This could mean Larry had just not seen the working model on Warren, but Bob had, but Bob really does come off as the technical expert in the group so I like to think he was a scientist on his homeworld. We see both him and Larry again in the final episode, still on Kinnear, and I like to think Larry is there because he's now the leader of the freed hares living there, and Bob is the one studying and reverse-engineering the climate converter to figure out how to reprogram it.

As for Willy understanding the toad language we don't know how much time has passed since the first three episodes. Obviously, the U.A.F. and S.P.A.C.E. would know their language from captured toad soldiers and toad technology (that and they know their whole history!), so perhaps Bucky et al gave Willy a crash-course on the toad language, although, again, as with the code Jenny types to get past the satellites, this is seen on a console while almost everything else written down by the toads (from the K for Komplex to the logo for TTN) is written in English, implying the stuff on the climate converter's screen is not actually the toad language but merely an encryption, one Willy would've been taught to crack by Bucky and the others by now.

I'm of the opinion that what we see is what we get. The Aniversian characters speak English and can therefore understand Willy. There's no inconvenient language barrier, so why would there be an alphabetical one? Why assume that since 90% of the written words in the show are in English they're really not?

As for the code Jenny uses, I doubt it's in the Aldebaran language. They speak English and aren't part of the U.A.F. - they lack a representative on the Council and are a very secretive society, so why would their language be used at all by S.P.A.C.E., which is the U.A.F.'s military? I think the code just looks like that because it's exactly that; encrypted code. Remember that it's for the only thing defending Genus from attack so of course it would be unreadable except to people trained to use it. In fact, I'm willing to bet that only certain members of the Righteous Indignation's crew (specifically Bucky, Jenny and Blinky) can read the code while others (Deadeye and Bruiser) can't.

(Although now that I think about it a huge flaw in the way this is done would be that the ability to read the code means little; you can transmit it without actually understanding it, so long as you possess the correct sequence, as Toadborg did. This means anyone can transmit the clearance codes as long as they've got this one specific sequence, which explains why Bucky was so adamant about getting the codes back from Al; although one wonders why they didn't just hightail it back to Genus ahead of the mothership and get them to change the code sequence to a new one, like they do with nuclear armament codes - of course one could also wonder why the toads did not destroy the dormant satellites with the mothership's considerable arsenal when they had the chance, unless they intended on using the defense network themselves once they had control of the planet, which would be smart).

As far as the money goes, it being labelled play money but Al and Deadeye not noticing strikes me as a genuine blooper. For one thing, the script identifies it as "Monopoly money" specifically, and it seems to me that the voice actors and animators did things based on this, but they labelled it as generic play money to avoid being sued by Parker Brothers (or is it Milton Bradley?). And, heck, now that I think of it I've actually never heard of real play money actually saying "Play money" on it in huge bold letters like that.

Hmmm... Well, as I say, the code might be plain old hexidecimal in a sequence matched to those odd Kanji, so the code shown there may not actually mean anything. See my penultimate post there, and see if it doesn't jive well with the rest of my explanation. I don't think Deadeye's overlooking the markings on the money was a blooper. There were a few interesting bloopers with the English, though. Here's one last picture I intended to show you which is of the posted sign on Willy's door. "Wort" for "work" is either a blooper, or a little in-joke sight gag for the animators. As Fox News says, we report, you decide:

The animators did correct that error in the next episode, and in further episodes, while the wording was the same, its arrangement was a little different, kind of like that blooper in Back To The Future concerning Marty's letter to Doc which some sharp-eyed Japanese kid studying English passed along to the producers. It's actually somewhat plausible that Willy would change the sign from time to time (since it's only marker scribbling on a large piece of paper, after all), but I do wonder why he has this on his closet door rather than the door between his bedroom and the house! (What, was he expecting company to arrive in his closet or something?)

Whatever the case may be, none of the characters ever comment on that door sign. I presume none of them but Willy can read it either.